India should insist that developed nations take the lead with substantial emission reductions, in line with the IPCC recommendations. Any non-binding agreement committing all nations without distinction should be rejected.  It is a measure of the current state of global climate negotiations that the only point on which all nations are likely to agree is that the prospects of an agreement at Copenhagen are far from bright. The moral and...

Recognises key principle of common and differentiated responsibilities Statement in line with India’s position: Sunita Narain India on Wednesday expressed satisfaction with the joint Indo-U.S. statement, particularly the portion on climate change, which “represents an increased degree of congruence” in the way the two countries approach the challenge. According to an official spokesperson, the Prime Minister’s visit to the U.S. also laid the foundation for a significant and focussed collaborative effort both on...

The rural population is at present estimated at 85 crores. Ten per cent of the households are completely landless. Another 52 per cent have holdings of less than 0.2 hectare. The per capita agricultural land in the rural areas has come down to 0.12 hectare. According to the National Sample Survey, the annual income of an agricultural household from farming is less than Rs 12,000 and from all sources it...

In my July 2002 column and the preface to the revised and abridged version of my 1988 book, The Hindu Equilibrium, I noted the astonishing post-modern turn in Indian history, whose canonical book Imagining India by RB Inden claimed that caste was an invention of the colonial British Raj. This ran contrary to the central theme of my book that the caste system arose in ancient India in the Indo...

It does seem that Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh chose an inopportune time — the eve of the crucial UN climate negotiations — to endorse the findings by a retired scientist that Himalayan glaciers have not been ‘retreating’ any faster than they have been for the past century. The study by V.K. Raina, a former Deputy Director General of the Geological Survey of India, has apparently not been peer-reviewed. No less...